The present invention relates to a mechanism for stacking flexible media of varying dimensions and accumulating the stacked material. In particular, an embodiment of the mechanism operates to stack banknotes of different dimensions in a storage cassette.
Banknote acceptors are well known and have found wide applications in vending, ticketing and gaming applications. Such acceptors generally have a facility for storing the accepted banknotes in an orderly fashion. This facilitates bulk handling of the accepted money and is an efficient use of the limited space available in a typical automatic transaction machine installation.
In sophisticated automatic transaction machine applications, such as in casino gaming machines, the currency is stacked in an enclosed, lockable removable cassette. In such applications the money cannot be directly accessed by the operator servicing the host machine. Instead, the money is transported in the locked cassette to a secure place, such as a central cash handling room, where an authorized person opens the cassette.
The vast majority of currency stacker units in production today use a stacking technique involving transporting a bill in a bill passageway or elevator to a location opposite a pressure plate or ram mechanism. The pressure plate is typically oriented to be perpendicular to the surface of the bill and is operated to drive the money out of the channel and into the storage compartment. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,260 to Okkonen et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,519 to Zouzoulas describe such devices.
Alternative stacking mechanisms include a bill channel comprised of longitudinal members which rotate (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,639,081, 5,564,691 and 5,624,017). None of these devices is well adapted to applications where the flexible media may be of variable size and shape, and where the stacker mechanism must be implemented in a compact physical space.